Red Right Hand (4 page)

The chaos moved, surging toward me.

Something hot and wet hit my palm, setting it afire.

The world exploded.

 

6

I
SNAPPED BACK
to the real world in a harsh, pulling jerk.

I found myself on my knees, still on the kitchen floor. Nyarlathotep stood over me, hand clamped around my wrist. His normal hand. The red right one held my now empty coffee mug from earlier. Something sticky ran down my arm in a twisty, winding trickle. I looked. Coffee. Coffee mixed with blood streamed down my arm, dripping off my hand onto the floor. My mind tumbled into working order and my first coherent thought became:

Who's going to clean up this mess?

The bones of my wrist
ached
under the Man in Black's fingers, and the scar that ran up my forearm thrummed with cold.

Let me go!

I jerked down and to the inside, like I'd been trained to, and slipped my hand out of his grasp. I scrambled,
my shoes squeaking on wet linoleum, putting as much
distance between me and the Man in Black as I could. He watched me, his lips pulled into a bemused smirk. My back hit the wall. The wall was solid. It was real. Carefully I stood, sliding up, getting my feet under me.

A hornet's nest buzzed inside my body. I could feel my blood running under my skin, rushing and blasting through the veins. I felt high, charged, jolted full of some weird energy that made the world spin faster.

“What the
hell
just happened?”

Nyarlathotep smiled. “Blood touched your Mark, and your Sight activated.”

“Stop.” My left hand, the smooth uninjured one, flew up between us. “Stop using those words like they mean something to me.”

I thought for a second, pulling it all together. I looked down, studying the symbol etched into my palm. My hands were shaking, vibrating and tingling like they were hooked into a live wire. The lines and swirls made grooves in my flesh, open and raw, but they weren't bleeding anymore. My hand felt sticky, but the stickiness had the sugary tack of coffee instead of the iron-tanged texture of blood. “You're saying my blood, on this thing
you
did to me, made me see … what the hell did I see?”

His normal hand swept up and down, indicating his body. “This is merely a glamour, a skinsuit I use to walk unhindered in your world. Your Sight revealed to you my true form on this plane of reality.”

“It's ugly as hell, just so you know,” I spat. The insult felt good. A tiny stab. It didn't change the fact that this situation had become completely batshit crazy, but it made me feel stronger, a little more in control.

The Man in Black shrugged.

I wiped my shaky hand on my hoodie. The material was tissue-soft from hundreds of washings, but it still felt like sandpaper across the symbol cut in my flesh. “No more blood on this, not ever. 'Cause I
never
want to see that again.”

“You will need your magick, Charlotte Tristan Moore, if you are to be of service to me. I will require much of you before I am done.”

“You can
require
whatever you want. I'm not doing it.”

Nyarlathotep appeared suddenly there, in front of me, looming tall, much taller than me. Dark eyes glittered as he leaned in, voice low and sinister. “When the time comes, Acolyte, you will do
exactly
what I need you to do.”

That close he was overwhelming, looming like a tidal wave pausing before it devastates the shoreline. He smelled like musk and grave dirt, something primal that pulled deep inside me. In a blink he was back across the room. “When you need your magick, it can be activated by touching your Mark with any bodily fluid. Blood is the strongest, followed by sexual issue, but any secretion will spark it to life.”

Bodily fluid? Secretion? Sexual issue? What?

I pushed those thoughts out of the way.

Stay focused. Work the problem.

“Why should I help you?”

Dark eyes sparkled. “I could kill you.”

The threat hit me like a slap. “Then do it and get it over with.” Anger bubbled at his words, boiling away the fear I'd felt since seeing the skinhounds. I was
sick
of being terrified. I'd worked too hard to not be terrified every day of my life.
Nothing
was worth being stuck in fear. Fear grinds you down to bone dust and nothing, breaking your will, making you less than human.

Been there, done that, fuck you.

The Man in Black sighed and chuckled.

“Charlotte Tristan Moore, I am not the only one who will seek you out now that your gift has been activated. There are other things, things that crawl and slither at the edge of night, things that would find you. They will come, and they will not have the mercy I have shown.”

“Mercy? I haven't seen any mercy from you.”

“I spared your life from the skinhounds. I have not slaughtered your friends in their sleep, even though I could. I have not sought out everyone you love and care for and reduced them to mewling pieces of meat that cry for death as a relief from the tortures inflicted upon them.” His red right hand tapped the tabletop. “You will not receive such kindness from those that will seek you without my protection.”

“Wait a minute,
you're
the one who Marked me! If these things come, it will be because of what
you
did to me.”

“That does not matter.” He stuttered in my sight again, suddenly standing without having stood. “What matters now is your choice. Serve as my Acolyte and be protected, or refuse and die.” He reached out his hand, his red right hand, to me.

My eyes narrowed. Anger twisted in my belly like a snake.

“You're a bastard.”

The Man in Black chuckled in amusement.

 

7

M
Y SHREDDED EAR
throbbed as the cool night air brushed over it. It pulsed on the side of my head, still not hurting, but I could feel it.

“You should lock your door. You never know what might walk in if you do not.”

I glanced at Nyarlathotep. He looked amused standing on the porch beside me, a statue carved from the night. His coat rustled around him, uneasy.

“You know your coat hates you, right?”

The Dark Man chuckled. “It has never forgiven me for filleting it off its original host.”

“What is it?”

“It was an archangel who strayed too far from his appointed territory. Now it is my coat.”

“You skinned an archangel? And you're trying to convince me you're the lesser of two evils?”

The Man in Black's smile gleamed in the shadow of his face. “I never claimed to be lesser.”

I turned from the door, starting down the steps. He moved beside me, matching me step for step. My hip scraped along the handrail. I leaned as far from him as I could, desperate for his coat, the still-living skin, to
not
brush against me. If the dark god next to me noticed, he gave no indication.

My eyes scanned the short yard that buffered the parking lot from the row of townhouses. Once I made it past the handrails, it would be wide and open.

Hold it together. Remember what Sensei taught you. You're almost there. Distract him, then make your move and run like hell.

“That's my car over there.” I pointed across the narrow yard to the parking lot.

Oh, shit.

A slender male figure leaned on the hood of my car. His shoulders looked narrower than normal, with his head down and hands stuffed in pockets. A thick lock of hair curled over his forehead, shadowing his eyes. He looked up as we stepped off the stairs and onto the sidewalk, the streetlight above revealing a clean jawline and a nose slightly crooked from being broken in a wrestling match in high school.

Daniel.

I stopped short.

This was the last thing I needed. Black magick and chaos gods and skinhounds had pushed me to the edge of my ability to cope, but this? This would be too much. I
couldn't
deal with Daniel and what had happened earlier, not on top of the rest.

No way.

Nyarlathotep moved on the edge of my vision, reaching for me. I twisted away, needing to not be touched, especially by him.

Daniel walked toward us.

No, dammit, no.

I stepped forward, holding my hands up, moving between Daniel and the Man in Black. “Go home.”

“Charlie,” His voice sounded husky, a raw rasp. Even in the dark I could see the fresh bruise that ran from the collar of his T-shirt and up to his jawline, wide and purple, so solid it looked like paint on his skin.

I guessed I'd gotten him good with that elbow.

He cleared his throat. “I'm sorry about earlier. I didn't mean…”

“Get out of here. Go.” I shoved my words through clenched teeth. “If you know what's good for you, you'll leave.”

I could
feel
the Man in Black looming behind me. I had to get Daniel away from him, away from this situation. Anger still bubbled in me about earlier, since he'd betrayed my trust, since he had tried to do what he had, but still … he didn't need to get mixed up in whatever the hell I'd stepped into with Nyarlathotep.

Pain filled his face, concern in his green eyes. He swallowed so he could speak again. “Whatever I did that made you react like that … I didn't mean it. You gotta believe me.”

I lunged at him. “Get. The. Hell. Away. From. Me.” My hands hit his chest, punctuating each word, shoving him backward. My mind screamed at him.

Go! Leave now, before it's too late!

I turned away, hoping he would take the hint.

He drew in a sharp breath. “My God! Charlie! What happened to your ear?”

I'd forgotten about my shredded ear.

“It's fine. It's nothing.” My hand flew to the side of my face, fingers scrabbling, trying to pull too-short hair over the ruin of my ear. The hair didn't move, shellacked in place with dried blood that broke and crumbled under my fingertips like cheap dollar-store hair gel.

The Man in Black moved closer, coat
fwap
ping and
shush
ing.

Daniel looked up at Nyarlathotep. His hands clenched into fists and he stepped back, bracing himself. “Who are you?” His eyes flashed in the low light. “Are you the one who hurt her?”

He's trying to defend me. He's going to fight for me.

Something surged inside me, the same something that had grown during the last few months with Daniel.

Something that eased the hurt from earlier.

It wrestled against the sure belief that the Man in Black could kill Daniel where he stood.

I had to get him to leave, for his own safety. There was a split second when my head turned selfish and ugly, a throwback to years of looking out for myself.

Leave him. He can be your distraction. Let him deal with the Man in Black, and you can get away, get safe.

I pushed that thought down
hard,
smothering it before it could take root, before I could seriously consider it. Daniel hadn't seen what I saw in the kitchen. He thought Nyarlathotep was just human and he would try to fight him.

For me.

I couldn't cut and run and leave him to be hurt. I just couldn't.

Before I could do anything, the Man in Black stepped around me, his coat brushing my legs as he passed and raising gooseflesh under my jeans. He lifted his right hand toward Daniel.

The air around us came alive with energy, crackling like it does seconds before a lightning strike. Fear clenched my stomach, and the hornets inside my body began to swarm and buzz, beating inside my skin like pellets in a hailstorm. My hands shook with the magick running wild in my blood.

That awful red hand hung, skinless and raw, in the air between the two men, pointing at Daniel's face. “Who do you think I am, Daniel Alexander Langford?”

The air split with his voice. I couldn't see it, but I felt it like a whipcrack.

Daniel's face
changed,
growing loose and slack. One second he scowled with anger, the next his features smoothed, the muscles relaxing, leaving his jaw slung open and his eyes staring at the red right hand before him.

His voice came, sluggish and drawn. “You are Lord and Master, fit to be worshiped in the night and the nightmares of men.”

“Do you wish to worship me, Daniel Alexander Langford?”

“With all my heart and soul and mind, Master.”

Daniel sounded like a drone. Horror climbed my throat. I'd listened to him talk a lot the last few months. He was quick-witted and funny, his green eyes lighting up whenever we would wordplay off each other. It was part of his charm, part of him.

Part of the reason I'd let him get close.

This … this was not him, not him at all, and it filled me with as much terror as anything else this night.

I shoved Daniel, pushing him back a step. He stumbled, loose-limbed inside his clothes, as if he'd been strung together with rubber bands. I whirled to face the Man in Black.

“What did you just do to him?”

He shrugged, making his black coat ripple from ground to shoulders. “I did nothing. Your species longs to worship my kind. Your entire existence on this plane has held nameless cults dedicated to dark and strange gods.” He indicated Daniel with his normal hand. “This one is descended from a long line of such cultists. It is writ in his bones to turn to one like me in devotion.”

“Stop it, change it, leave him alone.”

“It is too late for that, Acolyte.” He gave a flourish with his terrible right hand. “Besides, he is amusing to me. It has been too long since I've had a cult.” He nodded sharply, his mind made up. “He comes with us.”

“No.”

Hell no
.

Nyarlathotep turned toward me slowly, dark eyes heavy-lidded like a cobra. “Make no mistake, Acolyte. He has been marked by me as surely as you have. If you abandon him here he will be meat to the very things that will seek to harm you. The only safety for him is with us until our appointed task is finished. There is still one skinhound on the loose.” He stepped closer, the edge of his coat brushing the front of my legs again. “Besides, he will be of use to us.”